What is the Longest Novel Ever Written?

When asked “What is the longest novel ever written?” most people instantly think of the thickest books they encountered in their youth — War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, or The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. They will be surprised to know that these epics are mere cottages compared to the skyscrapers of literature. Not one of the three aforementioned novels breaks into the top ten list of the longest novels ever written. The longest of the three, War and Peace, is 1,440 pages long containing about 561,093 words (English translation, Oxford World Classic edition). Compare that to the longest novel ever written — French author Madeleine de Scudéry’s Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, published in 10 volumes (13,095 pages) containing almost two million words. The length and weight of these novels will send readers scrambling for an ebook version.

Not surprisingly, most of these novels are not well-known or found in most high school or college curricula — for obvious reasons. Technically, the longest novel ever written originally in English and in one volume is Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady published in 1748. The British author, who was also a printer and publisher, had the freedom of writing circuitously since he was, in effect, self-published. It’s almost a shame he wasn’t paid by the word, though. Nevertheless, some 267 years later, his lengthy epistolary novel is still in print in various paperback editions as well as ebook editions. Richardson would be thrilled.

Despite its obscurity in the West, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong is the most widely read novel in China, where it is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature (alongside Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber). Moreover, Guanzhong’s impact on Chinese literature is compared to that of William Shakespeare’s impact on English literature.

Bookshelf presents the list of the top ten longest novels ever written — excluding, of course, multi-volume series (e.g., Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling).